EAST LONDON, Tuesday 1 September 2026 — The African National Congress has replaced 20 of the 43 ward councillors it elected in Buffalo City in 2021 with new candidates for November’s local government election, substantially reshaping its frontline team in one of South Africa’s eight metropolitan municipalities.
The party has retained 23 sitting ward councillors while selecting new candidates in the other 20 ANC-held wards.
ANC Dr WB Rubusana regional secretary Anele Lizo confirmed the candidate list, which was submitted to the Electoral Commission of South Africa before the 28 August deadline and presented publicly during the party’s regional manifesto launch in Mdantsane.
The scale of the turnover is significant ahead of the 4 November 2026 local government elections.
Unlike routine proportional-representation list adjustments, the changes affect almost half of the ANC’s existing ward representation in a metro where the party has historically been dominant but where its local organisation has faced candidate-selection disputes, defections and growing competition.
Lizo said some incumbent councillors were retained to provide continuity while communities had selected replacements in other wards.
He said the party’s candidate-selection process incorporated community meetings in which residents, including people who were not ANC members, could participate.
“While the ANC had its own processes in the selection of ward candidates, it was through community gatherings, where all community members in each of the wards elected people they felt fit to represent them in the new term of governance, and we respect their choices as the ANC,” Lizo told the Daily Dispatch.
Among the changes is the return of former mayoral committee member and former ANC proportional-representation councillor Sakhumzi Caga, who will contest Ward 11 in Mdantsane in place of Nozuko Claudia Stemele.
Zwelixole Nkohla will replace Oscar Mhlauli as the party’s Ward 13 candidate, while Lukhanyo Ndubane will contest Ward 14 instead of sitting councillor Zininzi Mtyingizane.
Mtyingizane, who serves on Mayor Princess Faku‘s mayoral committee, could instead appear on the ANC’s proportional-representation list, according to the Daily Dispatch.
ANC regional deputy secretary Bongiwe Sauli is another senior local figure not returning as a ward candidate.
Luzuko Ntshintshi will contest Ward 36 in Dimbaza in her place, although Sauli is also expected to be considered for a position on the party’s PR list.
Regional spokesperson Thulani Tempi has similarly been replaced as the Ward 45 candidate by Lihle Shushu and could move to the PR list.
The ANC had not yet publicly released its complete Buffalo City PR slate at the time of publication.
One of the politically sensitive changes concerns Ward 48.
Sinethemba Melude has been selected to replace incumbent councillor Phumezo Jaxa.
Ward 48 was among the areas affected by violent protests during the ANC’s candidate-selection process.
Disputes were subsequently lodged with higher party structures amid allegations that voting numbers had been manipulated.
Those allegations formed part of internal party disputes and have not been independently established.
The ANC’s national leadership convened a special National Executive Committee meeting on 27 August specifically to consider matters arising from its candidate-list process before nominations closed.
The party said the meeting formed part of the final stages of resolving candidate-selection matters in accordance with its internal rules and electoral requirements.
The Buffalo City changes therefore provide one of the clearest metro-level indications so far of how extensively the ANC’s candidate-selection process has altered its existing municipal representation.
The party is simultaneously defending its own wards and targeting all seven wards currently held by the Democratic Alliance.
The DA won wards 3, 4, 18, 19, 28, 29 and 47 in the 2021 municipal election.
The ANC has nominated Ondela Nceba Tywakadi in Ward 3, Ongeziwe Mnqovu in Ward 4, Nkululeko Nazo in Ward 18, Joshua Goss in Ward 19, Siphatho Handi in Ward 28, Mandlakazi Khwaza in Ward 29 and Mzubanzi Nkitha in Ward 47.
Lizo said the ANC believed it could retain all the wards it currently controls while taking seats from the DA.
That is a party campaign position rather than an electoral projection.
Buffalo City’s political environment has changed since the last municipal election.
Three ANC councillors defected to the Patriotic Alliance earlier this year, with the former ANC representatives publicly criticising the party’s regional leadership after leaving.
Candidate selection has also produced disputes within the governing party while Mayor Faku’s administration faces scrutiny over municipal employment programmes and service delivery.
The ANC nevertheless remains considerably stronger in Buffalo City than it is in several of the country’s other metropolitan municipalities.
In 2021, it won 43 of the metro’s 50 wards, with the DA taking the remaining seven.
That means the November contest is not simply about whether opposition parties can win control of the council.
It will also test whether the ANC can preserve the extensive ward network that has underpinned its control of Buffalo City while replacing almost half of the councillors who currently represent those communities.
The party’s national candidate strategy has placed particular emphasis on metropolitan municipalities and other strategically important councils.
Its official mayoral-selection programme identifies all eight metros — including Buffalo City and neighbouring Nelson Mandela Bay — as priority municipalities requiring centralised selection and vetting of mayoral candidates.
Buffalo City is also included among the Eastern Cape municipalities to which the ANC has assigned national executive committee deployees ahead of the election.
The immediate next development will be publication of the ANC’s proportional-representation list and its final mayoral candidate.
Those decisions will establish whether senior figures displaced from ward contests remain part of the prospective council and whether Faku is retained as the party’s candidate to lead the metro.
For now, the confirmed ward slate means voters in nearly half of the ANC-held wards will be asked to elect a different ANC representative in November — a significant restructuring of the governing party’s local political organisation in one of South Africa’s eight metros.
